This has been a week of reminders. Days checked off on a mental calendar, emails and voicemails to remind me that others haven’t forgotten (so how could I?). It isn’t that I’ve forgotten, though, you see, it’s that this week has been a week of reminders about other things too.

In January I was learning about rebuilding, tearing things down and building them back up again. Dusting off the old and trusting there was still some use for scraps somewhere. I didn’t learn, however, that sometimes some things are meant to be torn down and not rebuilt.

Sometimes people die, things stop working, relationships sputter to a halt, and cities are left behind. Sometimes we just have to trust that a time to tear down and a time to build up don’t have to be consecutive or simultaneous. Sometimes things fall apart and the only resolution left is to face resolutely forward, “forgetting what lies behind and pressing toward the mark.”

I was rebuked soundly earlier this week. It's not an unfamiliar rebuke, but the sort that grinds my innards every time I hear it—mostly because it's true, but partly because how dare they see into my soul so clearly? “This, all of this world stuff, isn’t your home. Being nostalgic about it won’t take you further and it won’t help you to trust the Lord if you’re always trying to go back to the last place where you felt safe. You need to let go of your grip and trust Him.”

I seethed inwardly, said I didn’t want to talk anymore, and went inside.

Because he was right. Because everyone who has ever said that to me was right. And everyone is a lot of people.

The verses aren’t unfamiliar, which is why they are the first ones on my heart as my tears mingle with the hot shower water and soap:

How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, and whose heart is set on
pilgrimage to Zion. Psalm 84.5

And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out
they would have had opportunity to return. But as it was they desired a better
country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to call them His own. Hebrews 11.15,16

And I thought of forty years in the wilderness, because I’m not going to lie, the silence on this website is a direct reflection of the silence I feel around me—this desert season. I thought of the Israelites who, having been delivered from the hand of oppression and slavery, felt it their duty to beg to go back to Egypt to die.

“The sons of Israel said to them, ‘Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full: for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly.”

They wanted to return to the best thing they knew, even though it would lead to death—even though they knew it couldn’t compare to milk and honey and promise, because they didn’t remember the promise of better things, of Zion. They had forgotten that there are some places to which they are not to return and some things that are not meant to be fixed. Some things are not intended for resurrection and some cities are better left behind.

This means that things might not every look the same again: people have died, yes they have died; families have fallen, humanity falters, and relationships die; Egypt is plighted and Potsdam is changed; friends become lovers and lovers marry, babies are born and we stand and we say goodbye on every street in every city.

But we never hope that things go back to the way they used to be, because used to be means used—and we are setting our hearts on new. Looking behind and celebrating anniversaries of sadness and death and the past only handicap us from expectation and promise. It is a time to build, not rebuild—Build new.